Preparing for a potential war is taking a heavy toll on our economy. A new governer has been appointed to our homworld to hopefully help our leader keep the war engine afloat. We will wait and see what unique talents he may harbor.

The colony of frogs from the abandoned ship continues to grow. We do not allow them to migate to Zenox worlds but instead keep their slimy selves isolated in their own colony, as is right and proper. They have been a drain on the empire and some have advocated doing terrible things to their world in order to cut losses. But saner heads prevailed and at least it appears some dividends may be realized.

The stress of managing the faltering economy has begun to take a toll on our leader. He has become a beancounter, checking each finacial report as it comes in from the colonies, looking for misuse of funds and hidden pork. It has increased our income from the colonies but has also increased the unhappiness of the people. The council is worried. The leaders fur doesn't look like it has been groomed in a long while. A bad sign indeed.

We have been contacted by the Sakkurea, the new empire discovered to the south. By my Whiskers! More frogs!

At least these frogs appear to be friendly. Look, they offer us money, never a bad thing. We shall call them the 'good frogs'. The others shall henceforth be known as the 'evil frogs'. Let it be written, so shall it be done.

The good frogs offer to swap their territory maps with ours. In a fit of indolent indulgence we agree. This reveals the good frog's homeworld and shows that their influence will swallow up that cluster. We will therefore abandon our expansion plans in that directiona and instead try to make friends with the good frogs there instead. Hopefully, they do not learn of the evil frogs. Frogs tend to stick together and that could prove to be awkward for us.

As we had surmised, the influence sphere of the good frogs already emcompasses the entirity of the southern star cluster. We must look elsewhere for expansion. To that end, our colony ship approaches our new sentinal world to the north. Meanwhile, our own inluence sphere presses heavily against that of the evil frogs, driving it back towards thir core worlds. Much remains undiscovered.

Our proud pusses have been building troops and ships. How many of each will they need to spring an alpha attack on the evil frog home worlds?

Right now there are about 470K troops loaded on transports ready to go. We estimate that the evil frog's home world has about an eqal number of troops and they are still building them. Our intelligence arm says that what we have will not be nearly enough. Perhaps we need to reseach bigger troop transports before attacking with a lot more troops? 2 to 1? 3 to 1? 4 to 1? What are the right odds to previal on the ground? And what about those 3 orbital defense bases? Those look like a tough nut to crack as well.

The coming decisions will be critial to the empire's survival. Until then, think well upon these things.

Standoff destroyers with catfighters and missiles (concussion missiles are good for standoff ranges with no loss of damage at distance) are a viable feline strategy. The question is do you have enough fast transports, troops and a good general to land despite some risk from the defenses and win the planet out from under them (2:1 wouild be good odds, unless the superiority of feline fighters to froggie flipper-floppers is sufficient to make up for numbers). If not, the cautious path is to attack their stations and shipping and try to tease and mousetrap their fleet away from their planet and destroy it.

Strategically, the good frogs evidently have two other races in the far SW cluster to keep an eye on, so unless they are totally secure to their rear don't pose a threat to the Catnip Central Cluster. If the good frogs fall into a war with their neighbors, their worlds might make a tasty treat.

In that central position, the thing to do besides making frog filet of your evil neighbors would be to colonize or at least effectively fully control those few isolated systems between the central and other clusters as well as the gas fields - this ring of islands in the vast empty sea of space between clusters will have great defensive, offensive and trade value and provide the spokes for building the future galactic empire with its hub at the central Catnip capital.

Assuming there is at least one major power to emerge from each cluster, it appears that in the Southeast cluster will be the main threat to you. They may follow the trail of stars to their southwest towards the good frogs, but heading to the center is the natural course and if a single empire holds that large SE cluster it will become fairly strong without any other opponents but you. Find out quickly if there is more than one empire down there, and if so seek to put them at claw and fang with each other until you are ready to step in to conquer one and leave the other at your mercy.

Like the good frogs, empires in the small cluster to your north or the one to the northeast each almost certainly have to worry about other empires in the clusters behind them, meaning they are more likely to be kept busy by nearby empires than risk a push across the circle of emptiness around the center against you with potential enemies behind. Again, controlling the intermediate stars - the whiskers that sense danger and speed a forceful response - will discourage advances against you. These near empires may prove at least temporary allies.

P.S. As the southeast cluster is prey and has a long stringy tail (of stars), I suggest designating it the Mouse Cluster.

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube Watch out for the good frogs in the long run though.. They tend to do just fine when it comes to Military Power.

Yeah, our kitties actually don't trust any type of frogs as far as they can throw them. Bugs either and those are now showing up as well. Just met the Shrimp also so it's going to get quite interesting, I think.

Interesting. In my current game as the Techno Rats, I am quite friendly with your so called Evil Frogs. The Good Frogs have been spoiling my colonization runs far too often and they covet my resoureces. Now that I surpass their military might, I might just attack them.

Now that you mention it, I checked and the good frogs in my game have a military strength disproportionately larger than their other ratings. But they are unlikely to start a war - which is good, as that is my job when it is time.

Thx, for this very entertaining AAR. But one blasphemic question. Is your race really representing cats? When I saw the picture of the race the first time my thought was "oh what a cute dog..." with the mouth, the nose and ears. So, are they really cats?